Are You A Visa / MasterCard Merchant
“Why should I be a MasterCard Merchant?” “Plastic” is the mothers milk of our retail business. Yes this is a great expense to the merchant. Yes this is a great expense to the consumer. I only know if you don’t accept charge cards you are loosing big bucks.
There are a number of companies that are trying to get you to accept the Visa and MasterCard both in your brick and mortar store and by online payment. You have a choice of getting next day funding or funding within a few days. If a customer comes into your store with no cash, they can still buy your products because of charge cards. You will get your money within 1-3 days. The same is true of well thought out websites. If they see it and need it they buy it- whether in your store or on line.
MasterCard Merchants and Visa Merchants are doing what is necessary to get their market share. They had to do the application, buy the equipment, get the dedicated phone line and create the website…expensive Yes. Necessary Yes! Do it right and give yourself a chance at success.
Another area when creating a website is the method you use to accept payments. Many companies use PayPal in the beginning. PayPal is ok but expensive. You will want to consider a shopping cart option for your customers. The shopping cart lets the customer choose multiple items to purchase at checkout instead of buying one item at a time. At checkout the customer will choose how they want to pay for your merchandise. You can offer them American Express and Discover to round out your options. Note: American Express and Discover are billed separate from Visa and MasterCard and will be a larger expense.
You might want to try and get a Visa / MasterCard merchant account. Very secure. Hard for the bad guys to defeat this system. SecureCode is what MasterCard calls it. Be sure you are using a system and processor that knows how to deal with this type of security. You will want to contact MasterCard for more details.
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